‘He’s different,’ said a very tall girl who was standing at the front of the crowd of children.
‘So are you,’ said Andrew. ‘You are the tallest girl in the whole school and you don’t like it when people make fun of you, do you?’
Then Andrew looked at the boy with the curly hair. ‘And you don’t like it when people say that you have girl’s hair,’ he said to the boy. ‘We are all different and that is what makes us interesting. What would life be like if we were all the same as one another?’
There was silence among the children. Then Yasin lifted his head high. ‘Boring,’ he said with a smile.
‘That’s right!’ exclaimed Andrew, returning his friend’s smile. ‘Flippin’ boring!’
And with that all of the children began to laugh. ‘Flippin’ boring,’ they chanted at one another.
Andrew went on to explain how he had spent the summer with Yasin, how they had built a camp together and played in the park, and how Yasin preferred Batman to Superman, and how he really was different because he didn’t even like hotdogs!
The children all laughed some more and soon everybody was talking about all the things that made them different from one another. Peter Jenkins even lifted up his jumper and showed everybody a big purple birthmark on the front of his belly. ‘Now that’s what I call different,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I bet none of you have a big birthmark like mine!’
When break time was over, Andrew put his hand up in class and suggested to the teacher that they should spend the lesson talking about how great it was that everybody was so different from everybody else and how people came to England from all over the world to begin a new life like his friend Yasin. The teacher agreed that it was important to be anindividual, and she also said how wonderful it was that the whole of Britain was such amulticultural island. Yasin wrote these two words down in his book and promised himself that he would learn them both and remember them always. He also wrote the word friendin his book. He already knew what friend meant, but he just wanted to write it down because he felt so lucky to have a good friend like Andrew who stood up for people and did not judge them just because they were different.